Librarian of the Future

The Maze Runner, by James Dashner

Okay, so here’s my thing about series books. I like them, in general, and I appreciate story arcs that cross over several books before being resolved. But. I intensely dislike it when, in the first book, the only real mystery is not solved. Give me something to feel good about, you know?

Unfortunately, that’s what this book does. And I’m just not invested enough in the story to go read another book to find out what’s happening. I might Wikipedia it instead.

The premise of the story is good — it’s the whole reason I wanted to read the book! There are all these boys trapped in a maze, and we follow along with the new kid, Thomas, who has just come in, memory mostly wiped like everyone else’s (he can remember his name, and he can remember general details about life but not specifics like if he has a family or where he lived), who nonetheless feels like everything around him looks a little familiar. And some of the other kids sort of recognize him, too, the ones who have had bad things happen to them. And this maze they’re in, it moves around every day and the boys have designated Runners who go out and try to map it, even though there doesn’t seem to be an exit.

Doesn’t that sound kind of cool? I was intrigued, anyway. But the book… it’s an action book kind of like The Knife of Never Letting Go, where there is no character development to speak of, but lots of running and jumping and climbing trees and whatnot. And it does that part pretty well, I’ll grant, but it’s not enough to get me to read more of the same.